There was the hospital report from the time he’d slapped her around before. The testimony about Halloween, how he was trick-or-treating after taking some stomach medication and it made him crazy, yelling at some poor kids, scaring them half to death. He had it in him, is what I’m saying. I’m not saying he was all bad, but some people have it in them and some do not.
We read his poems, for Lord’s sake—you can read them, too. All about knives and women and war and sex. He wrote a poem about whipping someone—whipping! That’s not something we talk about in this country. He was a troubled man, and he did not belong in Holt, New York, but that’s beside the point.
I watched his face during the trial. He was often angry, indignant. He thought that he was better than us. He wasn’t sad—he was furious. He scares me. I feel very confident in my decision. I hope he stays locked up there in Attica for the rest of his life.
Dizzy, I unlatched my seat belt and went to the tiny airplane bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face. Then I settled into my seat, feeling a dull fear in my gut when the pilot announced, “Welcome to New York!”
4
After taking a taxi from the airport to the hotel Gerry had chosen for me, I showered and tried to lie down. Too distraught to sleep, I called the Holt police station and made an appointment to take the train out and go through my mother’s files in the morning. Brendan Crosby was saddened to hear about the explosion in Baghdad. “I’d wondered why Alex wasn’t calling me every week,” said the detective. “Jesus Christ, I’m sorry,” he added.
“It’s possible he’s not dead,” I said.
“Oh,” said Brendan Crosby. “Right, of course.”
“They haven’t found him,” I said. “They’ve found plenty of bodies, but not Alex’s.”
“That’s great,” said Brendan Crosby. “That’s certainly good news.”
I got dressed and went for a walk. I had no idea where I was in the city, and it was very cold. Things were smoky again without the benefit of Jane Stafford’s soothing voice. I felt woozy as I stumbled along, my sneakers slapping the pavement. A vendor on the corner was selling handbags and scarves, and I stopped to buy a red scarf with matching mittens.
As the man counted my bills, I saw a beautiful building over his shoulder. I jaywalked across the street and went inside. It was the Park East Synagogue.
Round lights on brass poles surrounded an elaborate blue altar. When I sat down, I began to feel calmer, and the smoke dissipated. I wondered if my mother had been inside this synagogue. It was possible, wasn’t it? I closed my eyes, trying to feel her.
Trying to feel anything.
After my mother’s stone setting, I had been told to stop mourning. So I did stop—I was a good girl. But if you don’t let yourself feel sadness, you don’t feel any other emotions, either: hunger, happiness, love. Sitting in a synagogue pew, I missed the softness of my mother’s hair, her quick, sweet kisses. I missed Alex, and I missed being someone’s sister. And for the first time, I yearned for my father. But perhaps I had wanted him all along.
Without thinking hard about what I was doing, I walked back outside and looked for a bookstore. Before too long, I saw one. It was a dim shop located down a small stairway. The awning read: USED, RARE, COLLECTIBLE. A man with a cat in his lap looked up as I came inside, but he did not smile.
I found the poetry section and scanned the titles, my pulse fast. I made myself breathe deeply, as Jane Stafford had advised. You’re all right, Lauren, I told myself in my head, with her voice, you’re fine.
Then I said it aloud, “You’re fine, Lauren, you’re fine,” as I saw my father’s name. I took the book, one of his poetry collections, called Incarceration, from the shelf. It was a hardcover published in 1996, when I had been eighteen years old, a freshman at the University of Texas. In a neat hand, someone had written in pencil, First edition, $75.
I turned the pages, which felt fragile and were a bit yellowed. The book’s dedication page read, In memory of my beloved wife, Jordan Wegman Mahdian. I touched my mother’s name, and everything went smoky again. I sank to the floor. I wasn’t scared. My mother’s name in black type was clear on the page, but everything else was blurred. I stared at the words: my beloved wife.
I thought about the night in the tree house. I remembered going to sleep next to Alex, but then there had always been a blank space, as if what happened next had been blacked out, wiped away with an inky marker. But now, as if I were remembering the day I’d met Gerry or the plane ride to New York, the memory of the night my mother died was there:
I had awakened and climbed down the ladder. It was raining—the slats of the ladder were slippery and wet. Inside the house, it was dry. I went upstairs to snuggle in between my parents, where it would be warm. I heard strange sounds and stopped at the doorway to their room. There was motion in the bed, a cry from my mother that made me think my father was hurting her. He moved above her in the dark, and his face scared me. His naked body, her cries—it seemed violent and wrong. Then they stopped what they were doing, and it was still raining, and the light from the streetlamp made it look like my mother was crying. Why was she crying? Had he hurt her? They were so still.
Then my mother murmured something, maybe “My love.”
“Mmmm,” said my father, and I watched them, and they were complete without me. I was terrified, alone. My mother stirred and looked toward the doorway. She said, “Lauren?” but I was gone, running back outside into the rain. In the tree house, deep in my sleeping bag, I closed my eyes tightly. What had I seen? It was smoky, so scary I lay awake, and when I heard another cry, I did not move.
I did not help her. And so she died.
“Miss?” I looked up, the smoke clearing. The man—the cat in his arms now—stood above me. “I have his novel, too,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Please buy the book before reading it,” said the man, scolding me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
At the register, I bought my father’s poems. “Do you want the novel?” said the man, and I said, “Okay.”
I signed the credit card slip. Back in my hotel room, I opened my father’s giant tome, The Noose, and turned to the dedication page. The Noose had been published two years before. My father had written:
To Lauren and Alex,
In the hopes of holding you again.
Tabib el-jarayeh goum el-hagg
W’hatly el-dawa elli yowafig
Feih nas kateer bata’raf el-hagg
W’lagl el-daroora towafig
Doctor who treats wounds, help, hurry:
Get me the medicine that works.
There are many people who know the truth,
But who go along out of necessity.
—The Sira
5
Back in my hotel room, I took five Tylenol PMs, but I didn’t fall asleep. I had searched diphenhydramine on Google, back when I cared about my health, and someone had mentioned it could lead to ringing in the ears, and someone else had mentioned that it would stop working after a while.
My phone woke me out of a blank sleep. I had a crushing headache. I figured it was Gerry, so I didn’t answer. The only person I wanted to talk to was my brother, and one of these days I would have to admit that my brother was dead.
At the hotel’s front desk, I arranged a rental car. I could take a commuter train to Holt, but then I would be stuck there, and with a car, I would be in charge. I asked for a sedan with a GPS unit, and I paid full price. I checked out of the hotel, and when the car arrived, I put my bags in the back. I sat in the driver’s seat, started the engine, breathed deeply to get rid of the smoke that I knew I was imagining.
I drove out of the city on the Henry Hudson Parkway, wondering what it would be like to be a real estate agent in New York. Pretty lucrative, I figured. Nonetheless, there was something I didn’t like about the light here. It was cold, brittle. It made me sad. I considered driving to the airport and flying home to Texas, but I kept
on. My brother had started something, and I was going to finish it.
Holt was a nice town that could have been a movie set. A Steve Martin movie, one of his genial later ones, like Father of the Bride. As I drove along Main Street, I saw a barbershop called Snips with a spinning blue-and-white pole. There was a charming little toy store and a store that sold cookie bouquets. I saw two women in quilted vests holding Starbucks lattes and leaning again identical Lexus wagons, chatting. If my mother had lived, she might have become one of these ladies. If she had lived, I might have become one of these ladies.
The way I saw it, I could go to my old house on Ocean Avenue, the storage facility in White Plains, the Holt police station, or home to Maplewood Avenue in French Place, Austin, Texas, where my goddamn life waited for me.
“Okay, okay,” I said to my brother, wherever he was.
The Holt police station was a stone building next to the post office. As I parked next to a cruiser, I looked at the post office entrance and remembered waiting in line with my mom to mail packages. If I was good and didn’t wiggle too much, she would buy me stamps featuring reindeer or figure skaters. After the post office, we’d go across the street to the A&P for groceries. It all came back to me: the shopping cart, a chocolate doughnut from the box, my mother placing mayonnaise and raisin bread on the conveyor belt.
My third-grade class had gone on a tour of the jail, but I had been sick that day—chicken pox. I remembered staring at my face in my parents’ bathroom mirror, picking at a scab on my forehead. “You’ll have a scar forever if you scratch that off,” my mother warned, folding laundry in her room. I pulled the skin anyway.
In the rearview mirror of my rental car, I could still see the faint indentation above my left eyebrow.
Inside the station, I approached a middle-aged woman sitting behind a pane of glass. “I have an appointment with Detective Brendan Crosby?” I said. She nodded and said, “Have a seat, sweetheart.”
I wondered if she knew who I was. Holt was a small town. For all I knew, there hadn’t been a murder since my mother’s, just a bunch of parking tickets and kids stealing beer or skateboarding. I went to sit down in a folding chair next to a soda machine. The machine made a humming sound. It was kind of soothing, maybe because it reminded me of Jane Stafford’s noise machine. The woman’s phone rang, and she answered it.
At the end of the hallway, I saw a wiry man, about sixty. He had white hair cut short and a bristly mustache. “Hello, Lauren,” he said, walking toward me. “I’m Detective Crosby. Brendan.” He shook my hand and led me down the hall to a small office. “Please,” he said, waving me inside. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Water?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Great,” said Detective Crosby. “Please sit down. By the way,” he said. “I’m so sorry about your brother.”
“Well,” I said, “me, too. But you know—”
“He might be alive,” said Detective Crosby.
“It’s not likely,” I said. “But you never …” My voice trailed off. Trying not to cry, I whispered, “You never know.”
Detective Crosby cleared his throat. He stood behind his desk. “I have all your mother’s files here, if you …”
I looked up, and what I saw in the detective’s eyes was pity. “You interviewed my dad?” I said.
Detective Crosby nodded. “I interviewed you, too,” he said, sinking to his chair. “You were just a kid.”
I looked at the floor, which was linoleum. “I don’t think my dad is guilty,” I said. “I always thought he was. But now … I don’t know … something’s changed.”
“I’ve followed up on every lead,” said Detective Crosby. “I assure you. I pulled all the files for you, though. If you’d like to …”
He slid a stack of papers across his desk. I opened them and flipped through perfunctorily. There was nothing new. After a while, I closed the folder and sighed. “What do you think about the earring?” I said.
“What?”
“The earring, found with my mom? It wasn’t hers. Alex traced it—it belonged to a woman named Pauline Hall. Did you try to find her?”
Detective Crosby shook his head. “Your mother could have bought it secondhand, someone could have given it to her, she might have borrowed it … there’s no evidence of a break-in.”
“So you never followed that lead,” I said.
“Lauren,” said Detective Crosby, “Alex’s fixation on the various items found in your mother’s bedroom made him very unhappy. I’ll answer any questions you might have, but there are no leads left to follow. There was no sign of a forced entry into the house, there were no footprints.”
“You’re telling me to give up?” I said.
“That’s not my decision to make,” said Detective Crosby.
On his desk was a photograph. “Is that your family?” I said.
“Yes.” There was the detective, on Holt Beach. A woman his age sat beside him, and there were three grown children and two babies and even a goddamn dog.
“Is that Holt Beach?” I asked.
He nodded. “I was born and raised here,” he said. “Never lived anywhere else.”
“I didn’t want to leave, either,” I said.
“Yes, you did,” said the detective.
“Sorry?” I said.
“You told me. You wanted to be a ballerina. And you were going to live in Egypt, where your dad’s from.”
“I said that?”
He nodded. “You told me all about it,” he said. “The big market or something, camels.…” He smiled. “You told me Egypt was the birthplace of civilization. I remember it well. You were a confident young girl, with a lot of dreams.”
“Why was I talking about Egypt when my mother was dead?” I said. “That’s just crazy.”
“It happens,” said Detective Crosby. “Sometimes kids process things differently.”
“Why would my dad kill my mom?” I asked. “He loved her.”
“I can’t answer that for you,” said Detective Crosby.
“How does love turn into”—I picked up my mother’s file—“into this?”
“Lauren,” said Detective Crosby. I could tell he was ready for me to leave. He was antsy, but too polite to ask me to go. “Have you ever pushed your wife?”
“No, I have not,” said Detective Crosby.
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” said Detective Crosby.
“I’m sorry,” I said, standing. “Thank you for your time.”
“I’ll keep in touch,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said.
As I walked out, Detective Crosby said, “Lauren?”
I turned around.
“That isn’t love,” he said. “I promise you. Love is something else entirely.”
I drove away from the police station, not sure where to go next. I saw Harry’s pizzeria on my left and remembered going there with my parents, trying to convince them to let me order Mountain Dew with my cheese slice, though my mom always shook her head and told me my options were milk or water. I parked and went inside. The smell—a buttery, spicy scent, completely distinct and nothing like the doughy fragrance of the pizzerias in Austin—was wonderful. I could already taste the toasty crust in the back of my mouth.
Images exploded like flashbulbs in my mind: my father, sliding open the refrigerated case, slipping me a soda; Alex, after a game, wearing his green soccer jersey and cleats, folding a slice with his index finger to fit more in his mouth; my parents, their backs to me as they ordered, my dad’s hand flat on my mom’s back.
“You want something to eat?” said the man behind the counter. It was Vinny, his name was Vinny, though he didn’t seem to recognize me. I pretended to look at the white menu board, the small red letters spelling CHICKEN PARMIGIANA PIZZA and BAKED SHELLS and HOT WEDGES.
“A cheese slice,” I said.
“For here or to go?”
“Here,” I said. “It’s for here.”
/>
I took the thin paper plate to a table. My mom had used napkins from the metal dispenser to sop up the oil before eating, but my dad and Alex always made fun of her. “Mom, that’s gross!” Alex would say, pointing to her pile of greasy napkins.
“Hush,” she’d say, taking a bite.
I finished my pizza and went to the car. I didn’t need directions, but I typed my childhood address into the computer: 12 Ocean Avenue, Holt, New York. The GPS woman’s dulcet tones gave me simple instructions, and I obeyed them.
It took only about ten minutes. The library, pajama story night, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the crosswalk, my school, the Hallmark store, wrapping paper, pine needles along the road, the lapping waves of Long Island Sound …
I turned on Ocean Avenue. It was a blustery afternoon. I reached the house and pulled over. There it was. I sat in the car for a while, just looking. Twelve Ocean Avenue was a 3/2, unless it had been renovated. Half an acre, give or take. The views of the Sound would bring up the price, as would the excellent Holt school system. “A million dollars,” I murmured. “Maybe one-two-five.”
I almost expected my father to open the door and light a Gauloises Brunes. I stepped out of the car and pulled on my red mittens. The house was freshly painted. Someone had put poinsettias on the front porch, nestled into festive green pots. A wreath had been hung on the door.
Thanksgiving—it was a few weeks away. I had forgotten spending Thanksgiving in this house. My mom used to make Merilee’s sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. My father, who had been raised without Thanksgiving, loved preparing the traditional turkey with stuffing and canned cranberries. He used the Wüsthof knives to carve, standing proudly at the end of our dining room table.
My mother always invited neighbors, whoever had no family in town, or was estranged. She dressed up, wearing silk blouses and slim wool pants, putting on cheap holiday earrings or light-up pins. She drank red wine (I could hear her say, “Pass that Beaujolais!”) and got flushed and silly. She blew kisses to my father across the table. “What are you thankful for?” she’d ask us teasingly.
Close Your Eyes Page 14
